After bottles or other liquid containers are filled with the respective liquid or beverage the containers are usually closed and further processed and handled. One of these subsequent handling stations can comprise a labeling device. The labeling device applies at least one label onto the outer surface area of each container, whereby the label is preferably stuck to the container. Humidity or liquid drops on the outer surface area of the container interfere with the sticking of the labels because they impair the adhesive properties of the sticking label or the glue used. Furthermore liquid drops beneath the label lead to permanent optical impairments, especially as the enclosed liquid volume can usually not be removed after the label is stuck to the container.
Apart from applying labels the bottles or beverage containers can also be imprinted. Optionally the printing can be made directly on already applied labels to complete an existing print. Alternatively known direct printing methods can be used to directly print onto the outer surface area of the container. It is comprehensible that humidity hinders and/or interferes with all known printing methods leading to misprints or bad printing results. Therefore dry container surface areas are important to achieve good printing results.
To avoid the described disadvantages the outer surface area of the containers or bottles are usually dried before labeling. To achieve the desired drying result in a short distance and time, blowing stations are used, whereby a warm airflow is applied onto the container to be dried. Depending on the temperature, the volume flow and the flow velocity of the air the containers can be dried as required in a very short transport distance. Different embodiments of blowing stations are known. The expert in this technical field also knows several possibilities that use a warm air flow to dry containers.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,501,367 A shows a device for drying articles, whereby the articles are moved with the help of a conveyor chain along a flat lying shaft with a screw thread arranged on its outer surface, whereby the shaft is slowly rotating. The shaft has a tread pitch that is tuned to the outer diameter of the articles. This guarantees a suitable division and a regular rotation of the articles during their longitudinal transport, therefore a blow unit located opposite to the shaft ensures a uniform drying of the articles along their whole circumference.
Such drying devices normally show very good drying results. But usually they require a lot of space and reduce the possible machine cycle times because they are relatively slow. Therefore they are not suited to be used with filling devices or other processing machinery that have much higher throughput speeds. Other known drying devices show deficiencies by not removing the humidity completely.
The typical problems of known drying devices are shown in the representations of FIG. 1 (FIG. 1a to 1d). The device according to the known state of the art as represented in FIG. 1a shows a constant line 10 of bottles 12 to be dried. The bottles 12 are standing one directly behind each other without any gap on a conveying chain 14, a conveyor, a mat conveyor or another horizontal conveying device. The bottles 12 are coming from a filling station, are capped and any adhering liquid or humidity should be removed as completely as possible to get the bottles in the best possible condition for the following treatment, especially for a following labeling or printing process or the like. The schematic representation of FIG. 1b shows blowing devices 16 arranged on the left and the right side close to the bottles 12 that are transported in a horizontal direction. The blowing devices 16 can for example be formed by nozzle arrays, flat nozzles or something alike. The air flow 18 coming from the blowing device 16 is usually directed obliquely downwards as pointed out in FIG. 1b by parallel arrows to the right and left of the bottles 12. The representation of FIG. 1c shows an enlarged detail of a section marked with a circle in FIG. 1b. The air flow 18 is swirled around the bottle bottom 20 and at the edge of the conveying chain 14. Thereby adhering humidity and humidity entrained by the air flow 18 is swirled and cannot be completely removed in the downward direction. The swirled air has the reference number 22. As can be seen in the enlarged representation of FIG. 1d, the area showing the highest turbulence is between the containers or bottles 12. The blowing devices 16 are placed close to the conveying chain 14 so that also the lower part of the bottles 12 can be reached by the air flow 18. If the bottles 12 are standing on a normally used bottle transport device, e.g. a modular or linkage belt chain or a strap hinge chain, hereby generally referred to as conveying chain 14, then the lower returning strand 24 of the conveying chain 14 (see FIG. 1 b) can be wetted by the liquid especially by water. This liquid can then be protracted to the upper side 26 of the conveying chain 14 and therefore wet the containers or bottles 12 once more.